Straight White Male Thoughts

September 21, 2017

White privilege; for a while I saw it as a phrase, a concept that was being used to painted me in a bad light. Then I realized, wow I do have white privilege and on top of that I am a straight white male like Dana Carvey Netflix Special. My perspective is not invalid it gives me a vantage from on high. Suddenly I realized that my points of view carry so much MORE weight because I have privilege. So I have something I want to say about women in tech and the wage … I can’t do this I can’t, I can’t even finish the paragraph. Okay full disclosure writing a paragraph like that scares the hell out of me. I felt it needed to be there to get to the meat of what I really wanted to say this week.

What follows is simply my humble opinion take it or leave it.

The title and first paragraph of this is designed to either rile you up or piss you off. I recently heard a statistic on a youtube channel called film theory the video focused on fake news. The statement was that a study by MIT showed that angry or angering social media posts were three times more likely to get shared. You can get the gritty facts from the video. Seriously Matt Pat is my hero.

What I wanted to do was get some perspective on this. That statistic hit me in the face hard. When I started to think about it I felt deep shame like a child suddenly becoming aware of a wrong behavior.

Now there is plenty of civil discussion because, I have the classiest friends (I’m looking at you you know who you are) but this post has the most engagement and actual conversation, than literally anything else I have posted on-line, ever. Why? I think because the emotion, anger is what fueled the initial interaction with and comments. I know my anger towards the rouge anti freedom groups was what prompted me to post it.

Heck if you have made it this far into this article and this is your first time to ever read my work, yet you have seen it before then you too started reading it because I purposefully made the headline a fuse to an empty powder keg.

We should be ashamed me, you, all of us.

Anger is Shared and Like a Destructive Lava Flow

Anger overflows in the streets of our country it swallows the future of our kids. human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. – James 1:20. It doesn’t lead to the kind of life I want to live. Anger is shared by us, we are all just angry all the time.

Maybe you think to yourself. “Nah I am not angry all the time.” You might be right! I would say that I am not angry all the time. But we are angry about some very key things in society right now and frankly even in our happiest if the internet is on, if social media is checked, if you listen to the news at all then anger is most likely coloring your life. Instead of rose colored glasses we got blood red ones. Why! Why do we choose to let our lives, our neighbors, our churches, families and country continue to drink the poison.

Because we have forgotten what matters. We have forgotten meaning. We have let morals and values be eroded by the word fair. We have forgotten the word right! We have let our own self interest and group think squash the individual. We have forgotten how to be thankful.

Thankfulness Appreciation and Acknowledgment of The Individual

When I feel my most down, which is sometimes. Loosing two children and being a foster parent will do that to you. I am given two choices. The first either, I let the spring of my discord erupt in me and drink deep it’s dark acrid fluid, acrid but intoxicating. The second I submit myself to the circumstances and begin to thank God for my them.

Me and you could debate forever about God and thanking him but that is not what I am discussing. What I would rather do that is more on point for this article is to set a baseline of thankfulness and appreciation, so that no matter how low someone goes there is always something to be thankful for.

Okay Here I am honored and humbled that you would read this far.

No matter how low you get in life two things are a beacon calling you to thankfulness. The first is that there is always a deeper hole always and giving those that are worse off than you a leg up to where you are will help. The second is that the deeper and more painful the circumstances the more refined and precious your wisdom can become.

These are things worthy of appreciation and is certainly a sentiment worth clinging to.

Long and short it occurs to me that I might be accused of all of this perspective being because I am a straight white male. I don’t think that will be something that gets me down or riled up anymore because I am too busy helping those that God has put me in contact with and being thankful to him for my current circumstances no matter what direction they turn good, bad or indifferent.